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mdsolar writes with good news for the National Spherical Torus Experiment. Tucked away from major roadways and nestled amid more than 80 acres of forest sits a massive warehouse-like building where inside, a device that can produce temperatures hotter than the sun has sat cold and quiet for more than two years. But the wait is almost over for the nuclear fusion reactor to get back up and running at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. "We're very excited and we're all anxious to turn that machine back on," said Adam Cohen, deputy director for operations at PPPL. The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has been shut down since 2012 as it underwent a $94 million upgrade that will make it what officials say will be the most powerful fusion facility of its kind in the world. It is expected to be ready for operations in late winter or early spring, Cohen said.

The magnetic field in NSTX forms a plasma that is a torus since there is a hole through the center, but where the outer boundary of the plasma is almost spherical in shape, hence the name “spherical torus” or “ST”.

No it is not. There is a very clear defintion to what a torus is, and this is not. It may be seen as a torus-like shape, but not a torus. Proper use of terminology is important in science and engineering.

It may not be of the standard donut dimensions people are accustomed to when they think torus, but it's still a torus.

Again, its not a question of what people are accustomed to, but rather a question of definition. And no, the shape named "thorus" is not defined through the shape of a donut.

It's like saying that a rectangle with dimensions of 50x51 is a square-like rectangle. Simply calling it a rectangle would do.

False analogy. Both linguisting points are absolutely not comparable. In the case of the shape of the Tokamak built at PPPL, it is neither a sphere nor a torus. It's something else, which has no specific name. In your analogy, the 50x51 surface IS a rectangle. A better analogy would be, assuming there is no name such as rectangle for a 50x51 surface with straight angles, calling it a square-like box.